Angels in the Moonlight_A prequel to The Dublin Trilogy Read online

  Bunny shoved the walkie-talkie in his pocket and swung himself around so that he was facing Rory, with one leg now on either side of the balustrade.

  “So what’s the story, Rory? To use an American phrase, ‘it’s shit or get off the pot time’. Are you taking the quick way down or coming down the stairs with me?”

  “Go screw yourself, Bunny.”

  “I believe last time, despite Sergeant Cartwright’s fine work, it was your Aisling showing up to plead with you that got you to see sense wasn’t it?”

  “Yeah.”

  “I’m afraid she’s not coming this time.”

  “How do you know?”

  “Because her and . . . hang on,” said Bunny, pressing the button on the walkie-talkie and holding it up. “Who was with Aisling, Sarge?”

  Bunny held the walkie-talkie out towards Rory. “Her two sisters, her ma, her niece Carol and three nephews, I didn’t get their names.”

  Rory suddenly felt a whole lot more queasy.

  “To be fair,” said Bunny, “it was a good idea. I assume it was Aisling’s – you’re not smart enough for this. A man is threatening to jump off a building, so of course the staff and the security guards in the shops are going to be gawping out the windows. Human nature, isn’t it? Same as people slowing down to look at a car crash. So while you’re out here, pretending you’re about to Wile E Coyote yourself, your beloved and her extended family are availing themselves of the five-fingered discount in Brown Thomas’s. It’s a good scam. Trying the same trick twice though? Greedy. Every guard in Dublin had been briefed in case you tried it again.”

  “Ah for . . . I told her that but she wouldn’t listen.”

  “Well, the woman has expensive tastes,” said Bunny. “Let’s get down out of the cold then, shall we?”

  Rory sighed. “Fair enough.”

  Bunny hopped down onto the roof and disappeared from view.

  Rory stood there, looking down at his feet.

  After a few seconds, Bunny’s head reappeared. “Problem?”

  “I’m . . . I’m feeling a bit . . . funny. I’ve been standing here for a while . . . and I . . .”

  Rory looked down and suddenly the view began to swim. One image of the crowd juxtaposed messily on top of another. He closed his eyes and felt his head dipping forward . . .

  Screams. His eyes opened. There was a moment of giddy weightlessness as the ground swirled beneath him and then . . .

  A hand grabbed the back of his jacket. He was dragged back slightly but the coat slipped off him, his limp arms offering no resistance, and his body dipped forward again.

  Another hand grabbed his belt.

  Then Rory’s head cleared, his bladder emptied and he grabbed at the arms around him.

  “Alright, I got ye,” said Bunny.

  Rory tried to turn, pulling his way back towards the shore. Panic gripped his every nerve.

  “Calm the feck down—”

  One of his feet slipped off the ledge, jerking them both downwards. Rory redoubled his efforts, grabbing at everything, anything – wrapping them in a messy embrace.

  LIVE! LIVE! LIVE! The words blared like a siren in his head.

  “Stop fighting me, ye gobshite!”

  Screams from below.

  Bunny McGarry’s straining face rushed towards Rory.

  And then . . .

  Impact.

  Darkness.

  Nothing.

  Chapter Two

  Detective Sergeant Tim Spain, who some called Sergeant, several called Gringo and nobody called Tim, looked up from his keyboard and across the desk at his partner of three years. Bunny McGarry had his feet up on the table and was picking at his teeth with an unwound paperclip.

  “The suspect then became disorientated and dizzy for reasons unknown . . .”

  “Although almost certainly related to him being a gobshite,” said Bunny.

  “Shut up. It should be you filling out this report anyway.”

  “Bollocks, Gringo. If you’re too much of a wussie to go up on the roof, you do the paperwork. Them’s the rules.”

  “That’s a charming way to address a superior officer.”

  “Sorry, your lordship.”

  “He subsequently lost his balance and, as Detective McGarry endeavoured—”

  “Good word.”

  “Thank you – endeavoured to drag the suspect to safety, in his panicked state—”

  “The suspect’s.”

  “. . . the suspect’s panicked state, he began to fight Detective McGarry, endangering his own and Detective McGarry’s life, leaving the Garda officer with no option but to neutralise the suspect by . . . via . . . through . . .”

  “Headbutting him right in the puss and knocking the gobshite out cold.”

  “. . . unconventional but effective means. The suspect was then made safe and received medical attention at Connolly Hospital, see attached, blah blah blah . . . Officer McGarry behaved like a proper legend and even found time to eat his disgusting sandwiches which he is very definitely not allowed to do in the car.”

  “Done?”

  “Done.”

  “Right,” said Bunny. “Well, it’s been emotional. I’m off home for a well-deserved curry and an early night.”

  “My arse,” said Gringo. “Have you forgotten what day it is?”

  “October thirteenth, 1999. If this is more of your crap about the apocalypse and all that—”

  “No, although yes, we should avail ourselves of every opportunity afforded to us before all hell breaks loose but . . . no. October thirteenth? Don’t tell me that doesn’t ring a bell?”

  Bunny looked at Gringo for a moment. “Ah Christ, it’s not, is it?”

  “It is. It’s your birthday!”

  “Only it isn’t.”

  “That’s your opinion.”

  Chapter Three

  “But my feet are all sweaty.”

  Mulholland took a deep breath and tried to not say something he was going to regret. “I don’t care. You’re not taking your shoes off in the car. This is my place of work too, you know?”

  Delaney glowered at him from the passenger seat. “How’re you going to stop me?”

  “That’s a dangerous question to ask a man with a gun.”

  Detective Harry Delaney and Detective Bob Mulholland briefly made eye contact and then looked out of their separate windows. This was their third time being stuck together and they were unlikely to be exchanging Christmas cards any time soon. Delaney had the personal hygiene standards of a mentally-challenged baboon. Every time Mulholland looked at him he had a finger somewhere new – in his ear, eye, nostril, mouth. It was like he’d just been issued with a human head for the first time and he was trying to figure out how it worked. Bob had been forced to put up with a lot but the removal of footwear was the line in the sand that he would not allow to be crossed.

  It had already been a long day and it wasn’t even lunchtime. The heater in the car was broken and so they were both sitting there in their overcoats, freezing, apart from Delaney’s inexplicably warm feet. Escort duty was dull at the best of times – just following an armoured car about while it made its deliveries – but it was now both boring and cold. Bob knew he had drawn this detail as punishment for messing up the paperwork on the O’Byrne case. He had no idea what Delaney had done. Maybe nothing. Maybe somebody had just wanted to remove from their vicinity the sight of Harry Delaney taking his fingers on a magical mystery tour of his own body. Regardless, Bob was stuck with him, same as he was stuck in this damn traffic jam. It was only 1 pm and the Quays were already in a state of gridlock. If there was any sense the security vans and their escorts would be allowed to go up the bloody bus lanes but that had been pooh-poohed by the powers that be. Instead here they were, stuck in a tailback watching four cars go through every time the lights changed. They were also not allowed to attempt to avoid traffic jams. As a security measure, each van had been given three different potential routes and only told wh
ich one they were taking that morning. They then stayed on that route, end of story.

  Escort had become a much bigger deal ever since the spate of security van robberies over the summer. Nobody just robbed a bank any more. They either did one of those tiger kidnaps where they held a bank manager’s family hostage, or they hit a van. With all these dye packs and tracers they had he’d have thought it wouldn’t be worth the hassle, but apparently there was at least one gang in Dublin who were ahead of the curve on that.

  “Would you look at this fuckin’ eejit,” said Delaney, extracting his little finger from his earhole and wiping it on his suit trousers.

  “What?” said Bob.

  “Bloody motorbike, zigzagging in and out of traffic like he’s the only one who has somewhere he needs to be.”

  Bob looked into his side-view mirror and noticed a motorcycle courier on the driver’s side, a couple of cars back, weaving his way through the stationary traffic. It was only when the bike had drawn almost level with their car that the thought occurred to him: If the bike is on my side, how did Delaney see it? Answer – there were two bikes.

  Two simultaneous thunking noises came from behind them. Bob turned to see a suction cup attached to the back-seat window behind Delaney. If he had looked into his wing mirror, he would have seen another affixed to the window behind him. But his attention was firmly fixed on the passenger-side biker, who had now pulled up adjacent to the front wheel. He was pointing a gun at them.

  “Jesus,” said Delaney.

  Bob spotted the movement as Delaney reached for his gun. He slammed his left arm across the other man’s body to stop him getting them both killed.

  “Don’t be an idiot, he’s got us cold.”

  Then, the other biker appeared on Bob’s side of the car. He reached onto the roof and grabbed something. It was a third suction cup, which he placed in the centre of the windscreen. From it, a cord stretched to the suction cups on both sides of the car.

  “What the f—”

  The second biker then withdrew something from his messenger bag and held it up for them to see. Bob had never seen one in real life but he had watched enough movies to know a grenade when he saw one. Like a close-up magician, the biker exaggerated his movements – showing them that he was suppressing the safety lever on the side of the grenade. Then, he carefully placed it into what looked like an over-sized eggcup on top of the suction cup on the windscreen. He withdrew his hands slowly. Mulholland nodded as the biker pointed to the lever that was still being suppressed by the holder. Then, with a flourish, he pulled the pin.

  “Jesus H Christ!” said Delaney, blessing himself furiously. Mulholland wordlessly stared at the lever on the side of the grenade; it staying suppressed was the only thing keeping them alive.

  Then the biker took an A4 piece of paper from his bag and placed it against the windscreen.

  Please Read Carefully

  Cord goes slack, grenade goes BOOM

  Open a window – BOOM

  Open a door – BOOM

  Sit still. Turn off engine. Phone the bomb squad.

  Have a nice day.

  Both bikers then drove off. All in all, it had taken twenty-seven seconds to render the escort car utterly useless.

  “I’m getting the fuck out of here,” said Delaney.

  “Touch that door handle and I’ll shoot you.”

  Bob carefully turned the engine off, gently put the handbrake on and then slowly picked up the mic on the radio. “Control, this is car alpha foxtrot four nine, we have a problem.”

  Meanwhile, twenty feet away . . .

  Frankie Stewart looked at the red light and then turned the newspaper over again. He’d already read it all once and the football news three times. He was going to read it again. This traffic was moving slower than pigs in blankets at a bar mitzvah and they were already behind schedule. He would no doubt get a bollocking. It didn’t matter that they were on a fixed route and traffic was traffic, he’d bet any money that arse of a manager at the College Green branch would have a moan at him anyway. Frankie didn’t care, his beloved Leeds United were top of the league again. The best young team in Europe, that’s what the bloke in the paper had said. They were going to dominate for a decade – easy.

  A man in a parka with the hood up walked in front of the van. Pedestrians weaving in and out of traffic wound Frankie up. He’d seen some woman getting nailed on O’Connell Street by a cyclist only last week. Wasn’t the poor fella’s fault – if people will walk out into the middle of the road without paying attention, they’ve only themselves to blame. Come to that, it was cold out, but for once it wasn’t actually raining. What was this joker playing at with his hood up?

  The man stopped and calmly placed an A4 piece of paper up against the driver’s-side window.

  “What the . . .”

  Frankie looked at the picture and then read the words under it. Then he looked at the picture again. He couldn’t take his eyes off of it.

  Three soft taps brought Frankie back to the here and now. The man was holding a gun in his other hand and was tapping it against the window. Frankie looked into the face under the hood – blue eyes were the only things visible beneath the balaclava.

  Frankie nodded, slowly reached forward and pressed the intercom button on the dash.

  “Tina, listen to me. You need to open the back doors now.”

  Tina’s crotchety old voice came back over the intercom. “Ara feck off, Frankie, I’m tired of your daft pranks. Are Butch and Sundance outside again?”

  Frankie looked at the picture on the sheet again. It was of a nine-year-old girl, looking into the camera while holding up the front page of that morning’s newspaper. A copy of the same newspaper Frankie coincidentally held in his hands. She was smiling, happy. She was a dead ringer for her mother when she smiled.

  “I swear on my life, Tina, this is real. There’s a picture. They’ve . . .” Frankie swallowed. “They’ve got my daughter.”

  Twenty feet behind . . .

  Bob Mulholland held the radio mic in his hand. He stared at the grenade on the windscreen and then he watched as the two motorbikes made their way towards the van three cars in front. He watched as its back door swung open and the female guard inside handed out a large bag. One of the bikers put his hand inside it, rummaged around and then tossed a wad of bills into the Liffey. Dye pack.

  There was then an exchange of words before the other biker pushed the guard back inside and leaned into the van. He shook his head at the other biker. Clearly, they had been expecting there to be considerably more bags. They rode off. The second biker stopped briefly to pick up some fella in a parka and they were gone – one driving off down Ellis Street, the other cutting across the pavement on the Bloody Bridge, scattering pedestrians before zooming off down the side of the Guinness brewery.

  Out of sight, and all in under eighty seconds.

  The only way Bob could be certain it had really happened was he could clearly see the grenade still stuck to his windscreen.

  Somewhere nearby, a woman screamed.

  Chapter Four

  Bunny took a deep breath and pushed open the door to O’Hagan’s. A rapturous cheer greeted his arrival. The pub contained enough Gardaí to comfortably police the All Ireland final, although many of them were already two drinks past an official warning had they been working. Gringo was at the corner table, the king of all he surveyed.

  “Here he is,” he roared. “Happy birthday, amigo.”

  Bunny looked around at the assembly. “Half the peelers in Dublin are here.”

  “What can I say? As soon as they found out it was your birthday, there was no stopping them.”

  “But it’s not my birthday.”

  “You heard the man,” shouted Gringo.

  The assembly all raised their glasses. “Cheers!”

  One of the traditions of this now annual event was that every time Bunny denied it was his birthday, everyone had to drink.

  Bunny McGarry was
born on July 26th 1967. However, a few years ago Gringo had fancied a night on the beer with the lads, and his then wife, Sandra, never the most easy-going sort, had been far from keen. He’d got around this by making it Bunny’s birthday. Gringo was his only mate in the world and he couldn’t leave the poor sod alone on his birthday, so the story had gone. Sandra had bought it and so Bunny’s bullshit birthday bash had been born. It was now in its fourth year and, unlike Gringo’s marriage, it was going from strength to strength. As word had got around, the number of people attending the celebrations each year had grown. It said something for the mentality of the members of the Garda Síochána that they were far more likely to turn out to celebrate a fake birthday than a real one.

  “You should have got here earlier,” said Gringo. “Butch has already canaried one of the new kids.”

  “Ah feck it, I love when she does that!”

  “Butch” was Detective Pamela Cassidy – self-described lesbian fundamentalist. The nickname was entirely ironic. While nobody would refer to her as such to her face, she could be accurately described as petite – maybe eight stone and change. Red-haired and fresh-faced with an angelic demeanour, she didn’t look like a copper – a fact she used to her full advantage. Rumour had it she had been just short of the officially mandated height requirement at the time she had joined the guards. However, she had also been an Irish judo champion, so someone higher up had made sure that allowances were made. The “canarying” was a tradition that would no doubt give the HR department at Garda HQ fits if they ever found out about it. What it consisted of was Cassidy aggressively coming on to any unaware male recruit. They ran a book on how long it took for the young fella to turn tail and run. Most normally bailed when she started talking about her collection of “implements”. Fastest was one minute fifteen, slowest was eight minutes twelve.

  “How long did the lad last?” asked Bunny.

  “Six minutes.”

  “Very respectable showing. Who was it?”